A story.
My grandfather passed away on Wednesday.
Lung cancer. It took him pretty quickly after the initial diagnosis.
He opted for hospice in his home, which was astonishingly humane and dignified and I can’t say enough great things about them.
For a few weeks, an army of well-wishers came to see him. We visited once a week, usually on Sundays to watch football with him.
Though he faded pretty substantially and was very weak, he never lost his wit, humor and mental acuity. By last weekend, he was at peace with his situation and was ready to pass, but for one thing. He hadn’t gotten a chance to see my brother, Zach, who lives in California.
Zach arrived late on Tuesday and immediately went to my grandparents’ house. He spent a few hours with my grandfather, just talking and getting a chance to connect one last time. By Zach’s account, the talk put him at ease and was one of the best conversations they’d ever had. My grandfather was that kind of guy, even at the end. Soon after, Zach went spend to the night at our Mom’s and everyone at my grandparents’ house went to bed. Or so we thought.
Some time in the early hours of the morning, my grandmother returned to my grandfather’s bedside. They spent the next hours together and just prior to dawn he passed away in his own living room with his wife at his side. It was the right way for him to go. Just him and his beloved Bride.
My grandfather had seen everyone he needed to see, he’d given us all the best kind of comfort and guidance in those last days. We all knew he was ready and that his passing would be cause for celebrating his life as much as it would be for mourning the loss of him. And man, what a life he’d lived.
I can say with pretty firm confidence that lives like his are a thing of the past – great and meaningful and special and blessed, full lives. He helped save the world. He served in the Navy during WWII and – when the War ended – moved into private life and profession leveraging the experiences and relationships he’d built during his time in the service. He got married, had a family and thrived.
He saw the world with my grandmother and filled his home with artifacts of his life and travels. He was a leader of men, unto his last (every time we visited him in the final months, someone from his church would come by, scrambling to figure out how he’d been keeping the parish running smoothly for decades with little help from others). He taught his son and then my brother and cousin and I what it meant to be a man – kindness, humility and the kind of deference to women that never suggests they NEED our help, but rather that they deserve our respect. He also taught us all how to craft a story, tell a joke and – when appropriate – employ subtle, sarcastic humor to make a point. He taught us all to love the Redskins above all other teams. At my wedding in May, he danced with more of the young girls than anyone else in attendance and was widely hailed by those same ladies for his talent on the dance floor. Even after he took ill earlier this summer, he still made sure to hit the links for a few holes of golf (weather permitting).
He also endured his share of tragedy, some unimaginably terrible, but always with faith, grace, decency and calm. This was important to the rest of us, as it served to lead by example and taught us how to face adversity with dignity and humility.
In short, he lived life on his own terms and they were the kind of terms that most of us can only ever hope to achieve. I will always miss him, but am glad that his suffering was relatively brief, his final weeks filled with love, friends, family and fond remembrance. A lot of people say this sort of thing, but in his case it was truly the case – he was One of A Kind in the best of ways.